Hot Topics:

Budget Home Center soon to become Budget Home Supply

Family owned hardware and lumber store turns 30 this week

By Tony Kindelspire

Times-Call staff writer

Posted:
06/14/2014 10:05:26 AM MDT

Updated:
06/16/2014 12:15:37 PM MDT

Steve Miller sorts lumber at Budget Home Center, 780 Boston Ave., last week. Budget is celebrating its 30th anniversary Saturday, June 21, and will soon change its name to Budget Home Supply. (Lewis Geyer / TIMES-CALL)

It survived Home Depot coming to town in 2000. It fended off the challenge from Lowe's showing up five years later.

And this week, Budget Home Center is celebrating its 30th year in business, with no signs of going anywhere — although it will be changing its name for the first time in its history.

"This is our 30th year in business in Longmont in our third location," said Butch Vernon, who launched the business with his wife, Bev, in 1984. "We're doing a little bit of a name change — instead of Budget Home Center it will be Budget Home Supply. And it's because most of our business now is with contractors."

He said it was his son-in-law, Sean Angelo, who suggested the name change. The consumer business has been declining steadily, Vernon said, but business from contractors has remained steady and even increased. It's now about 70 percent of the store's revenue, Vernon said.

Part of that, he said, is because of his location. The South Pratt Parkway and Boston Avenue area is not nearly as well traveled as some of the spots his competitors are in.

"We had a lady came in yesterday, we sold her some new cabinets, and she said she'd lived here nine years and she never knew we were here," Vernon said.

30th anniversary celebration Saturday, June 21, featuring vendor displays and demos, fun things for the kids and lots of specials. A proceeds of the day's sale will be donated to the Longmont Museum.

After starting at 724 Main Street and then tripling its store size eight years later when it moved to a building at 750 W. Ninth Ave., the Vernons decided to build, from scratch, an 80,000-square-foot facility with a drive-through lumber yard. Budget Home opened in its current location in 1999.

The night he closed on the property was the same night he found out Home Depot would be coming to Longmont, he told the Times-Call a few years ago.

But he and his staff have hung in there, he said, by keeping prices competitive and maintaining the store's mom-and-pop atmosphere.

Angelo, who's married to the Vernons' daughter, Vernetta, who also works in the store, will be taking over the business when Butch and Bev retire.

"I had planned to do that in a year or two, but this put that off," Butch said.

The "this" he refers to is September's flood, which spilled the St. Vrain Creek onto much of his property.

The building took on the water and the floor and some of the display areas were ruined. Outside, where large amounts of lumber and decking material is stored, the damage was even worse, Vernon said. Some of the lighter wood, such as cedar, was washed on downstream by the water. For the heavier woods, Vernon said his staff power-washed it — about 25,000 pieces, he said — to salvage what they could.

"We had a great big storage building and I found that over on Boston, and we had a patio display (out front), real light weight, and it was just fine," Vernon said.

He estimated that the store suffered about a half-million dollars in inventory damage, "and about another half million to do a remodel.

"It set back my retirement a few years."

He did have flood insurance, Vernon said, but that covered his buildings only.

"You can't buy contents or inventory (insurance) for flood," Vernon said. "You can for fire, or if a windstorm came and took it out, but it excludes flooding."

Butch and Bev Vernon were part of the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame's class of 2010.

Customer service manager Kristen Wiley rings up a purchase for customer Jim Bradney at Budget Home Center last week. The store, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this week, is changing its name to Budget Home Supply. (Lewis Geyer / TIMES-CALL)

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.

Boulder is pretty good at producing rock bands, and by "rock," we mean the in-your-face, guitar-heavy, leather-clad variety — you know, the good kind. For a prime example, look no farther than BANDITS. Full Story